At the time of the present patent application demand for increased data capacity and efficiency in Internet traffic continues to increase dramatically as more individuals and businesses increase their use of the Internet. The ever-increasing demand also drives development of equipment for the Internet such as data packet routers. A number of enterprises are developing routers that are capable of faster and higher capacity handling of data packets.
The Internet, operating globally, comprises components from a wide variety of companies and organizations. It is, of course, necessary that such equipment conform to certain hardware and connection standards and operate by certain data transfer standards and protocols. These standards are all well known the skilled artisan.
In the Internet art at the time of this application a common standard for links between routers is the SONET OC-48c standard, which provides a data capacity of 2.5 gigabits per second (Gb/s). The increasing demand for faster routing has led to a higher-capacity interconnection OC-192c standard with a data capacity four times higher, or 10 Gb/s. Those purveyors of router equipment conforming to the OC-48c standard have an incentive to upgrade to the higher-capacity standard. One way to upgrade a router having OC-48c ports to interface to OC-192c links, is to develop new line cards with OC-192c compatible ports, and interface circuitry to handle the higher-speed interconnecting links. Developing the new equipment is far from trivial, and requires considerable time and expense.
The present inventors have developed a new and unique method and apparatus for interfacing router equipment originally developed and devoted to the OC-48c standard to the newer, higher-speed OC-192c links.